I'm not talking about the dreck that is being cranked out by the Disney studios today. I'm talking about the classic films that Disney himself was directly involved in: Bambi, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Alice In Wonderland, etc. They were ground breakers in many, many ways. And they were imaginative, very well done, and fun! And yet almost every reference to Disney and his films which appears on the SDMB belittles him and them. I'm tempted to think such an attitude is a form of snobbery by those who think that anything that is popular with the masses must be suspect and that one way to show your superiority is to put down Disney and his work. Am I wrong?

Who's disparaging classic Disney? If anything, I think most of our members who do participate in threads about classic Disney think they actually ARE classics?

Link to a thread where the situation you described happens, please?

I apologize because I do not know how to construct a link, but the 9th poster on the current Cafe Society thread "Movies in the fork of a road" curses Walt Disney for making a good movie. It's as if the poster has to say something nasty about Disney to counteract the good things he has just said. I see this all the time. (This posting is what prompted my original question. I could have directed my question at the poster but since I see such remarks quite often, I wanted a more general response.)

I think you severely misinterpreted the tone of that post. (Link) It reads to me as very much tongue in cheek, because Disney set the bar so high that later efforts just can't compare. That is definitely not a disparagement against Disney at all.

I think you severely misinterpreted the tone of that post. (Link) It reads to me as very much tongue in cheek, because Disney set the bar so high that later efforts just can't compare. That is definitely not a disparagement against Disney at all.

What made me laugh is that as pretty as it is, I can never watch it again. Snow White's voice sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. I wish it didn't affect me that way, as it's a lovely movie.

I've never seen it here but I think that some people have a knee-jerk negative response to anything that seems kid-oriented like Disney movies. Most of us go through this phase around adolescence but eventually get over it. However, some people don't.

As for more valid reasons for disliking Disney, I think many of his critics hate the way he bowdlerlized and sanitized fairy tales to make them more child-friendly. Conversely, you also have those who hate Disney for having too many things in his movies that are too frightening and disturbing for children.

Additionally, there are those who attack the whole Disney-hype machine that started with the founder and grew exponentially larger since the resurgence of the company's fortunes in the 1980's. It all reeks of a cult of personality that's continued long after Disney's death in 1966 (hence the urban legend about Disney not really being dead but cryogenically frozen). After all, when you think about it, what other movie mogul that was among Disney's conemporaries would have had an ego large enough that he would create theme-parks (and also planned communities) with his name on it? There's no "Harry Cohn-Land" or "Selznick City." Nobody in Hollywood is interested in using the name and reputation of a long-deceased studio executive or independent producer like Louis B. Mayer or Samuel Goldwyn to sell a movie today.

Another factor may be that the Disney company, post-Walt, has somewhat of a reputation for treating its non-celebrity employees badly, even by Hollywood standards. A friend of mine used to work there -- he and his fellow drones referred to the company as "Mauschwitz" or "Duckau".

Another factor may be that the Disney company, post-Walt, has somewhat of a reputation for treating its non-celebrity employees badly, even by Hollywood standards. A friend of mine used to work there -- he and his fellow drones referred to the company as "Mauschwitz" or "Duckau".

I was going to mention this in my previous post but this seems to be a continuation of an unfortunate tradition. During the 1940's, Disney became notorious for his attempts at union-busting and chintzy treatment of his workers.

As for more valid reasons for disliking Disney, I think many of his critics hate the way he bowdlerlized and sanitized fairy tales to make them more child-friendly.

I remember Jane Yolen complaining about The Little Mermaid, saying that the Disney version would overwhelm the Hans Christian Anderson version (which was much darker). And she was right. But that's not the reason for any mainstream dislike of Disney.

There a lot of hatred due the belief that Disney was responsible for the extension of the copyright term from death plus 50 to death plus 70. But that's a misinterpretation. Though Disney was certainly in favor of it, the real reason was to put the US in line with the Berne Convention (which seems to have made the change in order that the copyright on Mein Kampf didn't expire).

But Disney's hard line on protecting its copyrights has galled some.

There's also a certain amount of dislike for the commercialization of Disney, and of Disneyland and Disney World.

__________________
"East is East and West is West and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does."Purveyor of fine science fiction since 1982.

Disney made some great movies. The only complaint I'd make is that his movies were so good that they closed off an entire genre. Animated feature films all became imitations of his style (including subsequent Disney films) and are still trying to shake his influence off.

Another factor may be that the Disney company, post-Walt, has somewhat of a reputation for treating its non-celebrity employees badly, even by Hollywood standards. A friend of mine used to work there -- he and his fellow drones referred to the company as "Mauschwitz" or "Duckau".

A friend of mine has worked for the Maus for nearly 20 years and is increasingly unhappy. From all the things she's told me, I wouldn't take a job there if you paid me to.

An interesting thing I've noticed in Disney animated movies is that the bad guy almost always dies, usually violently (though technically offscreen), but never at the hand of the hero. Normally it's a twist of fate or bad luck, and only occasionally something that is a consequence of their own evil-doing.

An interesting thing I've noticed in Disney animated movies is that the bad guy almost always dies, usually violently (though technically offscreen), but never at the hand of the hero. Normally it's a twist of fate or bad luck, and only occasionally something that is a consequence of their own evil-doing.

His cartoons aren't mean-spirited enough. Give me the Wile E Coyote running off the cliff while holding dynamite, while the boulder falls right after. Gimme Bugs Bunny making Elmer blow his own head off with a shotgun, AGAIN! Gimme Itchy running Scratchy through a bread slicer!

His cartoons aren't mean-spirited enough. Give me the Wile E Coyote running off the cliff while holding dynamite, while the boulder falls right after. Gimme Bugs Bunny making Elmer blow his own head off with a shotgun, AGAIN! Gimme Itchy running Scratchy through a bread slicer!

Disney was a pussy.

Don't forget Daffy Duck getting his beak blown off.

Perhaps it's because I haven't really seen enough of Disney's short cartoons but you're right about that. On the whole, the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodie cartoons made for Warner Brothers are a lot funnier than Disney's. They mostly seem too reserved--like they're afraid to cut loose to do something outrageous.

To my raised during the MTV era sensabilities, the classic films are boring and the character's voices are irritating. I am not saying that they are bad or poorly made, I can appreciate the work that went into them, and I can understand why people like them, but they just don't entertain me and they can't keep me awake. I am just not an old (pre late 60's) movie fan, mainly due to slow pacing and overly dramatic dialogue delivery.

I have been to Disney World and Disney Land. All in all, I felt kinda fleeced, used, maybe even a little manipulated by the Disney Empire- kinda like I did when I bought my first car from a dealer.

I get a similar feeling when I watch the Disney Channel (which is why it is rarely on in my house). I can't stand the way that Disney tries to shove Hannah Montana and High School Musical down my kid's and other's throats around every corner. In addition, screw the the Disney Store and the poorly made overpriced plastic crap that they sell in there.

Don't know much about Walt Disney the man, don't got nothing against him.

Holy crap what a trainwreck! I actually read 8 pages of that--mainly because I was hoping someone would bring up the point that I objected to by the OP, that is, that if you have financial means to not put your kid in daycare, but choose to put them in daycare anyway, that you "don't care enough". That seemed so odd to me. I was a stay at home mom, but we put Dominic in daycare a few days a week because it was the only way to get him socialized with other kids! Nobody we knew had kids, and IMO it would have been uncaring to raise him without contact with other children his own age. But at least in the first 8 pages, nobody brought up that point. Hmph.

As for more valid reasons for disliking Disney, I think many of his critics hate the way he bowdlerlized and sanitized fairy tales to make them more child-friendly.

This is what I dislike about Disney movies. On the whole, I do enjoy Disney movies, but there are parts of them that irritate me. For example, I hate the huge chins that so many characters (mostly males) have. I also hate the mascot characters that are in many movies. A couple of examples would be the wacky gargoyle in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the minidragon AND cricket in Mulan. The minidragon was necessary, yes, but should have been very restrained. The cricket could have been used purely as a good luck charm and not as a mascot, and I believe the movie would have been better for it.

I have to say that usually the artwork and animation is spectacular. The songs are fantastic. And I really wish that they'd quit sanitizing the stories.

It's been a very long time since I've seen Mulan and I might be mistaken, but wasn't there a scene where the heroine goes to some kind of family shrine to pray to her ancestors, and they appear to her in the form of a bunch of silly-assed whimsical ghosts or something? If the scene is the way I remember it, isn't that kind of disrespectful to ancient Chinese culture? I mean, we're talking about centuries and centuries of extremely serious tradition with regards to the reverence of one's ancestors.

A lot of it has been said above -- although there atre plenty of reasons to be dissatisfied with Disney the man and his business practices, the main critical reason for disliking Disney is that he cleaned everythuing up and put a happy gloss and his own spin on everything. A Disney film would not, in general, be true to its roots. Look at the way the Disney folks restructured and rewrote Kipling's "The Jungle Book", or the way Travers disapproved of what they did with "Mary Popins", or how Lloyd Alexander disliked what they did with his "The Black Cauldron".

I don't outright condemn it, because Disney isn't really guilty of what a lot of folks seem to assume -- that he made ebverything Bright! and Shiny! and Happy! Disney films do seem to have a darker side, they do look for some complexity and depth of character -- Disney always wanted his films to have "heart". There's an attempt to appeal to both parents and to children , habving something for each group (and not in a simple, pandering way). Disney films provide a reliable oasis of "Family Entertainment", but they're not as treacly as that designation might suggest.

Consider "Alice in Wonderland" -- right off the bat you could easily condemn it because they didn't even attempt to retain or incorporate the Tenniel illustrations -- Disney invariably redesigns characters. They simplified and re-arranged the story considerably, and they threw out a lot of Carroll's original jokes and punning.

On the other hand, they kept a lot of the key incidents, the basic themes, and they produced a funny and witty picture. The original book(s), faithfully put on the screen, would have alternately bored the kids and freaked them out. But the Mad Tea Party, for instance, is genuinely funny, and filled with puns and jokwes that are faithful to Carroll's spirit, if not his letter. If you look closely at the film, it has a surprising number of Carroll's poems in it, although sometimes they're hidden away in the background. At any rate, I think the film is overall better than (and certainly more successful than) any other filmed version of the books.

One last note: Disney was a tough businessman, and charged what he knew he could get. I knew a small-town theater ownder back in the 1960s who cursed out Disney for charging absurdly high rates for film rentals, basically because he knew he could -- the relentless advertising (interlocked with marketing of toys, books, and games -- people who think Star Wars invented mass marketing tie-ins are way wrong) guaranteed a must-see audience that gave you a hit, but Disney's fees took away a lot of that profit.

Seriously though, I'm a huge fan of Disneyland, but not a huge fan of Disney films that don't feature Mickey/Donald/Goofy et al.

The only thing I can find about Mr. Disney to dislike is that he made a theme park so good all the other ones I've visited have paled in comparison, meaning I don't go to other Theme Parks as much because I won't enjoy myself at them as much as I enjoy Disneyland.

Meh. I like some Disney movies (some of them are among my favorite animated films), but not all of them. I'm not such a huge fan of the princess movies (save the more recent ones), but that's because I never really wanted to be a princess when I was little. I was too busy being a Lego architect . And I can't stand some "classics", Peter Pan especially. That whole movie gets on my nerves, but maybe I'm in the minority. Anyway, I've never given a movie a free pass if it was made by the Mouse House, but I don't let the brand name get in the way of my enjoyment, either.

As for Walt himself...there are rumors swirling around that he was anti-Semitic, but from what I've read about him this probably wasn't the case. As just one example, he personally assigned screenwriter Maurice Rapf, a Jew with liberal leanings, to work on Song of the South back in the '40s, apparently because he felt that Rapf could write a script that wasn't just a huge Stepin Fetchit-type show (Rapf eventually left the project due to personal issues with a co-worker, and the movie, although not exactly a minstrel show, did wind up with some elements that some people object to). Walt WAS, however, quite anti-communist (and, as an extension of that, probably anti-union as some here have suggested) later in life, and may or may not have been involved in the Hollywood blacklisting mania in the 1950s.

Well, there's good and bad. Giving The Hunchback of Notre Dame a happy ending is reason enough to hate the company, but Disney (or at least, people who worked for Disney) have also done some great stuff over the years.

Giving The Hunchback of Notre Dame a happy ending is reason enough to hate the company, but Disney (or at least, people who worked for Disney) have also done some great stuff over the years.

If you're going to call Disney on this, you ought to call the makers of every other film version, as well. I don't know of even ONE that's faithful to Victor Hugo's book. Even in the version usually acclaimed as "best" -- the Charles Laughton version, Quasimodo lives.

I'm convinced that the reason they made that film was so that they could make the scene where Quasimodo sweeps down and rescues Esmeralda. That combination of classic animation and CGI (especially of the crowd) almost brought tears to my eyes. I think they wanted to show off their nifty new software. Other aspects of that film were ..disturbing. But, yes, as a Disney film, they had to put a happy ending on it. That's part of the Disney expectation, and the Disney curse.

Bonus points: Why do you think the ending of Hugo's novel isn't "happy"?

I have to say that usually the artwork and animation is spectacular. The songs are fantastic. And I really wish that they'd quit sanitizing the stories.

Anytime you do an adaptation you make choices. Disney makes some fairly consistent formulaic ones. Happy ending, cute mascot. For years it worked very well for them (Disney's own studio has been backseat to now Disney owned and former Disney partner Pixar for some time - who makes different formulaic choices - and artistically in the backseat to Disney partner Studio Ghibli - at least if they've made some crap, they've also spent the past twenty years investing in some diamonds).

However, they haven't done taken The Cat In the Hat and cast Mike Myers in it or anything completely unforgivable like that.

If you're going to call Disney on this, you ought to call the makers of every other film version, as well. I don't know of even ONE that's faithful to Victor Hugo's book. Even in the version usually acclaimed as "best" -- the Charles Laughton version, Quasimodo lives.

You know, I kind of wonder how many people who claim to hate Disney movies for reasons like this would actually want to sit with their child through an animated, but truly faithful, adaptation of a book like Notre Dame de Paris.

First of all, the movie would be three and a half hours long.

And then, can you imagine the conversations you'd have to have with your eight-year-old?

"Mommy, why is Captain Phoebus kissing Esmerelda?"

Well, he thinks she's very special and he wants to be with her.

"But isn't Captain Phoebus going to marry that other girl?"

Well, yes. But Esmerelda is different, and exotic.

"So Captain Phoebus loves Esmerelda, too?"

No, he pretty much just wants to fuck her.

or

"Daddy, what are they doing to Esmerelda?"

They're hanging her, sweetie. That's a good vocabulary word for you. It means they tie a rope around her neck so she can't breathe.

"Why?"

Well, it's a way of killing her slowly.

"Oh. Does it hurt?"

Yes, Suzie. Yes it does.

"But Captain Phoebus is right next door. He'll help her, right?"

No, Suzie. No, he won't.

"Captain Phoebus is an asshole."

Yes, Suzie. Yes, he is.

...and that still leaves explaining why Quasimodo murders Frollo, then kills himself. But the last image, a haunting animated picture of two skeletons embracing while a jaunty Alan Menken tune plays, would be one for the ages.

FWIW, Disney is not the only institution that "sanitizes" classic stories and folktales. One fairy tale that they've never tackled is the "Frog Prince" story ("The Princess and the Frog" si a completely different tale, IIRC). Of course, most people know this story by the idiom, "you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince", but in the original version of this tale, the princess "cures" the frog by throwing him against a wall. Not exactly romantic, is it? And the popular change to the ending of the story happened long ago.

Another famous example of this sort of thing is Shakespeare's King Lear. For many years after its revival in the post-Protectorate period in the late 17th century, theater companies would often change the ending to lighten it up, by excising Cordelia's death. This changed the entire thrust of the final act of the play, but was considered a more palatable version that the masses would actually pay to see. So this desire to make something that your audience will enjoy and expect is nothing new, although Disney is one of the major perpetrators of this today. Still, there's nothing wrong with a happy ending now and then - expecting an audience of 5-year-olds to appreciate the commentary on the fallibility of the religious establishment and of mankind in general in a faithful adaptation of Notre Dame de Paris is a bit much, I think. Come to think of it, I'm still wondering why Disney wanted to tackle this novel at all. Oh well.

The biggest problem with Hunchback wasn't the happy ending, it was the gargoyles. They were out of place. I loved everything else about the movie.

Here we are agreed. Why waste screen time (and an entire song) on three pointless and not-very-funny characters when your romantic male second lead, who in the current incarnation has no songs at all, is being voiced by Kevin Kline?

I've heard that Disney was an anti-Semite, but haven't ever had this substantiated with any actual evidence. Back in Disney's day, there was a strong connection in a lot of peoples' minds between Jews and Communism, and Disney was very strongly anti-Communist.

The biggest problem with Hunchback wasn't the happy ending, it was the gargoyles. They were out of place. I loved everything else about the movie.

I could have enjoyed the movie a lot more if they had only left out that gonzo gargoyle. Quasi needed someone to talk to (other than Frollo), and the two more serious gargoyles helped the plot along with careful exposition. But that third gargoyle...GAH. And their song, telling Quasi that he's quite a catch, is rather cruel.

Heaven's Light and Hellfire are such very strong songs that I am inclined to almost forgive them, though.

It's been a very long time since I've seen Mulan and I might be mistaken, but wasn't there a scene where the heroine goes to some kind of family shrine to pray to her ancestors, and they appear to her in the form of a bunch of silly-assed whimsical ghosts or something? If the scene is the way I remember it, isn't that kind of disrespectful to ancient Chinese culture? I mean, we're talking about centuries and centuries of extremely serious tradition with regards to the reverence of one's ancestors.

Koreans have a similar tradition and I thought it was amusing. There's plenty wrong with Mulan from a cultural representation perspective, but I don't think that was one of them.

Another famous example of this sort of thing is Shakespeare's King Lear. For many years after its revival in the post-Protectorate period in the late 17th century, theater companies would often change the ending to lighten it up, by excising Cordelia's death. This changed the entire thrust of the final act of the play, but was considered a more palatable version that the masses would actually pay to see. So this desire to make something that your audience will enjoy and expect is nothing new, although Disney is one of the major perpetrators of this today.

Heh. The funniest thing about this example is that the original story Shakespeare based his tragedy on did end the "fixed" way. Cordelia lived, reunited the kingdom, and had a more or less happily-ever-after (until she died later). But that wasn't good enough for ol' Will. Every time I see or read King Lear, I think about all the horrified theater-goers, and their faces when Lear emerges carrying his daughter's dead body (the story was a popular one, and the audience would have known the play's antecedent). So, in a way, the "fixed" ending was the right ending, though I think Shakespeare's ending is the superior one.

As for disliking Disney because it's "sanitized," I can't think of a sillier reason to hate Disney films. So what if it is sanitized? They're not making faithful adaptations, and they never claimed to. Plus, all of the Disney movies have very dark moments, or very dark subtext. I mean The Lion King is basically a re-telling to Hamlet, and the murder of the king by his own brother is no less horrifying just because they're lions.

Holy crap what a trainwreck! I actually read 8 pages of that--mainly because I was hoping someone would bring up the point that I objected to by the OP, that is, that if you have financial means to not put your kid in daycare, but choose to put them in daycare anyway, that you "don't care enough". That seemed so odd to me. I was a stay at home mom, but we put Dominic in daycare a few days a week because it was the only way to get him socialized with other kids! Nobody we knew had kids, and IMO it would have been uncaring to raise him without contact with other children his own age. But at least in the first 8 pages, nobody brought up that point. Hmph.